With the PlayStation 4, Sony has to capture its lost glory. In the days of the original PlayStation and PlayStation 2, the Japanese company ruled. But with the PS3, Sony made some arrogant and costly mistakes, starting with an opening price of $600.

Above: Sony starts selling the PS4 at the Standard

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

With the $400 PS4, the company is avoiding those mistakes and starting over at its roots, cementing a solid relationship with the gamers who will make or break the system as it competes against Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox One launch on Nov. 22.

Jon Koller, vice president of marketing, is part of a veteran team of executives who have been through the console wars before and devised the strategy for the new launch.

We caught up with Koller just before Thursday night’s launch of the PS4. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Jon Koller: It feels great. We talk a lot about it being the finish line of development, but really it’s the beginning. Now the platform starts, and we start to engage with our gamers in a way that we never have before, with games that have never been seen. It’s an exciting moment.

GB: We’re in the Standard Hotel in New York. Tell us a little about what’s happening downstairs.

Koller: Downstairs there’s a very lucky group in line – in very cold New York weather, I should note – waiting for the first PS4 to be sold. We have a line of maybe 500 people that have been waiting out there for about a day to get theirs. It just shows the passion that the PlayStation fan has. It’s palpable. It’s what makes us love doing what we do.

We decided, this time, to have an event that was about gaming, really dedicated – just like we are – by gamers for gamers. The whole hotel is rented out. The PR team’s done a great job of having each floor be dedicated to one of the launch games and taking the media through that.

Above: Ratchet character on the Standard

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GB: Tell me about the behind-the-scenes setup you’ve had to do for this. It’s pretty elaborate. Did you have some discussions about what kind of impact you want to make with the event for this, compared to last time around?

Koller: My contribution to that was the Spike TV component, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I respect what EA’s done with Madden and what some of the other groups have done on these shows. We wanted to make it what it is, a cultural touchstone. This doesn’t happen very often. We wanted to celebrate that.

On the PR side, this is awesome. I don’t know how they found a hotel that looks like a PS4, but they did. The structure of it is great, because of the way the line can work. There’s a bunch of rabid, passionate fans out there. We needed to make this something that was equal to the cultural touchstone that it is.

GB: Twitch is live streaming it as well. That didn’t happen last time.

Koller: Yeah, you were there, weren’t you, in San Francisco? There was an L.A. celebrity party too. But we’re doing things a little differently this time. It’s much more about the games.

The live stream is always interesting. You watch that and hear people and see the interaction of the community. This is something that’s felt nationally. We’re seeing a lot of interaction on social networks right now. There are people taking off work to be able to play tomorrow. That was one of the things about launching on a Friday. We don’t want to encourage anyone to miss work, but if you want to take a three-day weekend with your PlayStation 4, go for it.

Above: Sony decorated the shower stalls at the Standard in PS symbols.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GB: How do you feel about the launch in general?

Koller: Really positive. It’s always great to get out of the office and interact with the fans and see how much love they have for the brand. It makes everyone feel good. I try to bring my team. You have to feel this, feel how great it is.

The launch overall, just in business terms, we feel great about it. The pre-orders are through the roof. The demand is huge. Of the five platform launches we’ve had, this is the best game lineup. It reminds me a lot of the PS2 launch, when we had such pent-up demand – “When is the PS2 coming?” The same thing is happening here.

GB: It seems like every indication out there is that there’s plentiful supply this time, compared to past launches.

Koller: You always look at it relative to demand. There’s adequate supply for those who want one, but I think they’re going to want to make sure they get in line tonight. Or if they see a unit at retail, they’ll want to snap that up and not wait. The sense is that the demand will be very strong through the holidays.

When you look at some of our past launches, you could argue about the various points of supply. We had a lot of demand for PS3, and we were short. We didn’t want to relive that. It’s hard when you don’t have a lot of supply. But even so, we have a lot of demand this time around.

GB: I’ve heard people like John Riccitiello say that the pre-order indications suggest that these new machines will sell more in five months than they sold in 14 months the last time. Based on pre-orders, based on what you’ve heard from people, do you feel like we’re just not in as extreme a shortage?

Koller: Yeah. You also look at the way the business has changed. We went out at $599 with the PS3. Xbox was out there for a year. They were $100 cheaper at that time when we launched. But still, an expensive proposition. This time around we’re at $399. There’s much more opportunity, from a spending perspective, for people to be able to come in and buy a couple of games with that. We maybe didn’t have that flexibility last time. I think John and other analysts are right. The demand for this will be sustained for a longer period of time at a real high level than we’ve seen in the past. We see it in a lot of our quantitative modeling – a lot of pent-up demand, a lot of passion to get into this next generation.

GB: What’s better this time, in the box?

Koller: Well, you start with the graphics. We talk a lot about it being the price of entry, but it’s really not. It’s theatrical. It’s become much more of that dream I think a lot of people have had in this industry for years, to become in line with what you see in a Michael Bay movie, an Avatar, where it’s so immersive and engaging. It makes you want to be part of that environment.

What’s behind the hood is an unbelievable social component. Some of the engineers in Japan like to talk about “playing with like-minded souls.” It’s about playing with people who are similar gamers, who have similar passions, similar loves for the types of experience that you want. You’re able to share your experiences with them, whether it’s through live streaming or shared content. It’s about being able to live in different environments and different worlds, like a Destiny, that evolve as you play them, where the developers give the tools to the community and it ends up being something much different than what had originally been envisioned.

Above: Knack at Sony PS4 launch

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GB: What are you noticing about some of these people who’ve shown up here?

Koller: They love PlayStation. I think we heard the chants. They’re very cold, but very happy that they’re going to go home at midnight—If you look at any of the sites, or look on Twitter tonight, you see people saying, “I’m 15th in line. I can’t wait. At 12:30 I’ll be at home playing this. I’ll let you know how it is.” That’s what we want to see. We want people to be out there. If you want to stay up all night, we’ve got the coffee. Just be ready to share your content.

GB: Does it feel good to be a week ahead of the Xbox One?

Koller: I don’t think the week matters much. In the longer term it’s about the proposition. I don’t know if we’ve been at a point in gaming where there’s been a bigger difference between the two main competitors. They’ve been very public with their strategy and we’ve been very public with the opportunity we see in standing for gamers and for games. That’s born of a device created by Mark Cerny, a gamer himself, and going to game developers to find out what would make the best gaming device ever made. The best graphics and the best overall experience. That’s most important to us.

Above: Sony characters at PS4 launch.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GB: Does the lineup have something for everyone?

Koller: Yeah, and not only the launch lineup. We had two goals when we set out to make the PlayStation 4. The first was to solve the immediacy issue that pervades most of the gaming industry. Make it much quicker to get into content.

The second one was accessibility. We wanted to make it more accessible for all types of gamers. We as an industry all learned a lesson from what the Wii has done, what mobile has done, what tablet’s done, what Steam has done. These are models that you’d think of as non-traditional, but they’ve come in and captured other types of gamers that the traditional industry hadn’t in many years.

We’ve designed the PS4 to be more cooperative with mobile and tablet. We’ve talked about it being additive to the last generation, and it has been, but in this case we decided that the way people have been utilizing mobile and tablet has changed to a point where being able to tie in your experiences that you have on your mobile device to what you’re doing on your PlayStation 4 — that big theatrical experience in your living room – is important.

We’ve tried to push a diverse range of games. You look at a game like Knack, which is a Cerny game, but it’s much different from what you’d see at the launch of many platforms, many systems. It’s something that I think many types of gamers can enjoy. Our goal is to have everything from a strong Call of Duty to a strong Knack type of experience. We want all kinds.

GB: Do you think some differences are going to turn out to matter a lot? Things like the Call of Duty resolution [which is better at 1080p on the PS4 compared to 720p on the Xbox One]?

Koller: Those kinds of things will matter, and matter quite a bit to certain types of people. When we look at the market, there’s a connoisseur of gaming – the kind of person who’s in line out there right now, who absolutely cares about that. Because we’ve built the system to be the most technologically proficient, that’s going to be what a lot of people see when they look at the systems next to each other.

]]>0Sony’s Jon Koller on making the PS4 launch a ‘cultural touchstone’ (interview)GamesBeat weekly roundup: Everything you need to know about the PlayStation 4 and morehttp://venturebeat.com/2013/11/15/gamesbeat-weekly-roundup-70/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/15/gamesbeat-weekly-roundup-70/#commentsFri, 15 Nov 2013 18:16:47 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=861026If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.
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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

The PlayStation 4 is here! We have an almost ridiculous amount of content covering Sony’s latest console this week, and glimpses of the big launch party Thursday night. You’ll also find reviews for Contrast, Killzone: Shadow Fall, Resogun, and Knack as well as a teardown of the PS4 hardware revealing how much like a PC it really is.

In non-PS4 news, Nintendo will finally allow gamers to share their eShop balances between the Wii U and 3Ds, Nintendo also sold over 452,000 3DS handhelds in October, and the poor little Android-based GameStick is launching alongside the PlayStation 4 after missing its original release date on Nov. 8.

]]>0GamesBeat weekly roundup: Everything you need to know about the PlayStation 4 and morePS4 platformer Knack is a fun adventure that fails to think big (review)http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/13/knack-review/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/13/knack-review/#commentsWed, 13 Nov 2013 14:00:48 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=859303Knack is a fun, solid platformer with a great concept, but his game frustratingly fails to take full advantage of next-generation tech or its own game mechanics.
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Amid all the other PlayStation 4 launch titles, Knack has oddly been one that Sony has pushed to the forefront. It’s been a while since the publisher last tried the whimsical, mascot-driven action platformer as a console launch title, something we haven’t seen since Crash Bandicoot was taken out behind the barn.

In fact, Knack fits many of the same tropes as Crash, but the execution in this game is thankfully much, much better on so many levels.

And although it’s several steps short of brilliance, Knack is nonetheless a solid adventure with some surprising care put into a lot of elements that most games take for granted. But as good as this gets, it’s a shame the designers couldn’t dream a little bigger.

Above: Knack and his crew aren’t the deepest characters, but they’re likeable enough to carry the action.

Image Credit: Sony Japan

What you’ll like

Smartly paced combat

Everything in Knack revolves around relics, a mystical energy source that fuels engines, generators, and other contraptions. Wise-talking Knack himself is a living, sentient relic, but his main source of power is collecting smaller relics to bulk up his own body.

Whether Knack is big or small, he’s a powerful fighter, but his game smartly uses his Lego-like abilities to fit a variety of combat situations. Knack generally relies on his brute strength to clobber anything from tiny bugs to goblin brutes to gun-toting humans, but you’ll have to be careful to keep him from crumbling.

Early on, Knack also discovers that he can incorporate crystals, ice shards, wood logs, and even metal scrap into his body, with a quirk to every material that keeps things interesting. Ice Knack melts when exposed to the sun, Wood Knack catches on fire, Metal Knack is vulnerable to magnets, and Stealth Knack (crystal) can bypass security lasers while at risk of dying in a single hit.

Each form has an inventive benefit, and to Sony Japan’s credit, the studio even did a little extra by having Knack tackle lots of levels at vastly different sizes. Each encounter introduces something to keep the gameplay fresh, which is helpful in balancing the linear level design.

Most levels are big, bright, and rich in detail

Although the levels don’t offer too much room for exploration, they all look and feel distinctly different. With no backtracking and little sense of retread, you’re constantly looking forward to the next area and what new sights they’ll bring.

You also get frequent rewards for straying off the beaten path in the rare instances Knack permits it. Lots of collectibles and hidden power-ups are concealed behind not-so-easy-to-spot walls, and it’s impossible to grab everything on your first run through the game.

Above: No matter how big Knack gets, enemies are always challenging enough to keep you on your toes.

Image Credit: Sony Japan

Good replay value

Knack can probably entice you into a second and third playthrough thanks to those hidden collectibles. Some of them are gadgets that you have to put together piece-by-piece, and others are special relics that boost Knack’s power or give him special abilities.

By far, the wisest choice for replay value is the “new game plus” option, which should make multiple runs through Knack less of a hassle. At the very least, younger kids should get a kick out of blitzing through early levels that way.

Even two-dimensional characters are likeable

Going into Knack, I didn’t expect to care about the story, but the narrative actually has some real charm. Just about everyone fits a stereotype—Knack is the mascot with attitude, and the rich guy with the goatee is evil—but the characters are fleshed out enough that they make the Disney-esque story pretty entertaining.

Voice acting isn’t noteworthy, but the delivery is solid, and the actors all do some good work. Granted, the whole story is very cookie-cutter with some major plot holes, but it’s always enjoyable.

Nov. 15 is fast approaching. If you already have a PlayStation 4 reserved, you’re probably stressing about which game you need to pick up with the new hardware. Well, we finally have a list of confirmed launch-day titles.

Sony released a list of its first-party, third-party, and indie titles that will be available on day one. It’s possible that the list could change, and Sony says it will likely add more games as it approves some titles that are still in the quality-assurance process.

The retail games will cost $60, but Sony confirmed that the digital releases, like Resogun, will “sell for much less.”

Check out the full list below, and click here to compare it to Xbox One’s launch day:

Mark Cerny has been busy as the system architect for the PlayStation 4. But he has also built a game to show it off with a cute character called Knack, who starts as a 3-foot-tall mascot and then grows into something bigger.

Knack is an imaginative launch title that is designed to show off the graphics and physics capabilities of the PS4. At the same time, it’s a “mashup of a Pixar-style family film and a character action game.” It has plenty of cutscenes where the characters talk to each other that advance the story. It’s a 3D platform game, reminiscent of Cerny’s (and Naughty Dog’s) Crash Bandicoot on the original PlayStation, which he described as a brutally difficult game.

Above: Mark Cerny shows Knack

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

The little guy is made up of various particles known as Relics that can absorb and hold together using a magical energy force. Knack starts out small but grows bigger, stronger, and more menacing as he picks up more and more Relics. That means he can become a 30-foot-tall rampaging monster, with an amusingly deep voice.

We got a preview of the fortress level in the title, which is coming out exclusively on the PS 4 on Nov. 15, in a session at Sony’s U.S. game headquarters in Foster City, Calif. Cerny narrated the preview and then we got some hands-on time. Here’s our impressions.

Crossover appeal

Knack is a character that can appeal to both hardcore gamers and a broader audience.

Hardcore players can appreciate the gameplay possibilities with a character who can assemble and disassemble himself at will. He can grow massively powerful so that he can take out enemies — a race of nasty goblins — with one punch.

But Knack is a cute character with cartoon-style graphics that will be appealing to people who aren’t typical gamers. He uses an energy to bind together shapes that give him his own form. Cerny said that his team designed the character and the game so that first-time gamers might also enjoy it. The game will be rated Everyone 10+.

“Knack was constructed with two very different audiences in mind,” Cerny said. “It is for core gamers who enjoy mascot platform games like Crash Bandicoot on the original PlayStation. Crash was a brutally difficult game. Even on a normal setting, Knack is pretty challenging. You have to master the moveset.

“On easy, it is a dramatically different game. It can be someone’s first console game. My intent was there would be something for the rest of the family: sons, daughters, spouses.”

Scaling difficulty (which includes co-op)

The game will be hard or easy based on your own choices. Kids can play it on the lowest setting. Two players can play cooperatively and make the combat even easier. The second player can pay as “Robo Knack,” or a small robotic character who can help heal Knack. Robo Knack can donate parts to make Knack bigger, but when he does so, Robo Knack shrinks.

But Cerny said the game is designed on normal and hard settings to provide challenges to hardcore gamers. In several sections of the fortress level that Cerny showed us, I died as I was trying to escape the blasts, arrows, and sword thrusts of enemies. A big boss battle at the end of the fortress level is very difficult to beat the first time around.

Kids will probably enjoy picking up the Relics, which are spheres, cubes, or pyramids that Knack uses to bulk himself up.

Above: Knack with icicles

Image Credit: Sony

Hey, you got the Pixar in my game?

The levels and areas look as detailed as a computer-generated animated film. Sometimes, there’s a trade-off between the intensity of action sequences and the beauty of the background. In this case, you’ll see cool-looking background imagery and lighting — as well as fast action combat.

Varied gameplay

The gameplay has a lot of variety. You can sneak around a bit and run fast when you’re small. When you’re massive, you don’t have to worry as much about taking damage. Little Knack can absorb “sun stone” energy. Once his Sun Stone meter hits a certain level, he can launch devastating one-time “super move” attacks. Big Knack can pick up cars and fling them at aircraft. But there are a wide variety of goblin enemies. Some lay mines that can take Knack out. Archers and tanks can hit him from afar, while sword-wielding goblins can attack him up close.

Whenever Knack dies, he reassembles and is ready to fight again. When Knack is big, he can destroy buildings and wreak havoc through a city. The game has a lot of treasure collection There are 60 secret rooms with treasure chests filled with unique Relics.

Who needs Relics?

There’s more to Knack than just growing bigger. When he is small, you can’t take on big goblins. But he doesn’t always need Relics to get bigger. He can pick up icicles and become stronger, but only for a limited time, since the icicles will melt in the sun. He can also strengthen himself with wooden objects, but if someone sets him on fire, the wood will burn up. In one section, where Knack is made of icicles, he gets smaller and smaller as he has to take on more and more enemies guarding a gate. So that means that the icicles add pressure to finishing off the enemies before they disappear.

The whole world will be watching what happens at E3, the big gaming trade show that should draw 45,000 to 50,000 game-industry professionals this week in Los Angeles.

We’re expecting to hear more details about Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 4 console, coming this fall. GamesBeat staff will liveblog the event in real time on this page, so please be sure to come back later for commentary on the event.

Sony first announced the PlayStation 4 in February and showed off a bunch of new titles, from a new Killzone game to Knack from renowned developer Mark Cerny.

Hopefully, the company will show a real box this time. We’re expecting to hear more about a launch date or launch window today as well, but we might not see a price on the machine until later. Please add your own comments as you watch the event.

Sony announced its latest gaming hardware at an event in New York tonight, but if you weren’t around to see it, we have you covered. The GamesBeat staff has spent the past couple days writing up the big reveal, and we’re collecting all of our stories here. And we’re still working, so be sure to check back for the latest news about Sony’s big night.

Speculation, part one

Ever since that frustratingly vague video came out last month, the gaming world has wondered what Sony was planning to show at tonight’s event. We were all pretty sure from the start that it was the PlayStation 4, but beyond that, we only had rumors and wishful thinking to point us anywhere. But those things aren’t really news, so we passed the time getting nostalgic and trying to see what the past could teach us.

The system

Finally, it was time to see which of those speculations, if any, were correct. Over a two-hour press briefing, Sony made its announcement, had some developers come out, and showed off some games — all without ever actually telling us what the console is going to look like.

Speculation, part two

Now that we know that the PS4 is coming, where do we go from here? It’s time for another round of analysis and speculation, but now we have way more confirmed information to work from. Here’s what people are talking about now that the briefing is over.

]]>0GamesBeat’s complete coverage of Sony’s PlayStation 4 announcementKnack is the first game confirmed for the PlayStation 4 (and it looks like a Pixar movie)http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/20/knack-is-the-first-confirmed-playstation-4-game/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/20/knack-is-the-first-confirmed-playstation-4-game/#commentsWed, 20 Feb 2013 23:34:14 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=625602This action game comes from the mind of Mark Cerny, the lead designer of the PlayStation 4 hardware.
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific!

Sony announced Knack, a third-person action game for the new system, at its PlayStation Meeting today. The title features (dare I say it) near Pixar-like visuals in a world filled with goblins and the humans who fear them.

The title character is a tiny morphing robot who can gain significant strength by absorbing objects that are around him in the game’s world.

Knack is also notable for who is directing it. Mark Cerny is the lead designer behind the PlayStation 4, and he is the lead designer on Knack. He knows the hardware and is squeezing some impressive Toy Story-like visuals out of it.

We’ll have more information as it is available.

]]>0Knack is the first game confirmed for the PlayStation 4 (and it looks like a Pixar movie)